Zero Dark Thirty details the limits of targeted killing

A scene from Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty.

Photograph by: Handout
, Sony

In the forthcoming film Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow details the long slog on the intelligence trail that culminated in the May 2, 2011, assassination of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs in Abottabad, Pakistan. It’s not going to have a surprise ending. But the depiction of what preceded the raid may surprise people unacquainted with the painstaking and ugly process of tracking and killing terrorists. It may also surprise people to know that the number one killer of terrorists aren’t SEAL teams or Jason Bourne-like Mossad combatants, but a cadre of middle-aged U.S. Air Force officers working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). These officers are skilled at piloting heavily armed unmanned aerial vehicles — more commonly known as drones — from the comfort of a distant air-conditioned office.

The last few decades have seen a seismic shift in how wars are fought. We are moving away from the large-scale battlefield of tanks, artillery and infantry supported by combat aircraft, to the asymmetric and unconventional theatre of operations where distinguishing friend from foe becomes increasingly difficult. With this shift comes an according debate on whether the targeted killing of our enemies — be they holed up in a hotel in Dubai or in a mud hut in the tiny village of Karez Kot — is the best way to win the war on terror.

One of the main points of contention in this ongoing debate is the apparent militarization of the CIA. The agency’s focus as an intelligence gathering entity is focused more and more on providing “actionable intelligence” to kill members of al-Qaeda and their affiliates, be they in Pakistan, Yemen or (as we’ll soon see) in places like Mali. This fixation on the targeted killing of high-value leaders and the controversial practice known as “signature strikes,” where groups who bear certain signatures — characteristics associated with terrorist activity but whose identities aren’t known — may in fact achieve the opposite of what the strike intended.

This is especially apparent in Yemen. There, the focus on killing members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has distracted the intelligence community from examining the political, social and economic changes that directly contribute to understanding AQAP’s presence and growth in the region. Gregory Johnsen, Near East Studies Scholar at Princeton University and author of the definitive book on AQAP, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda and America’s War in Arabia, provides strong evidence in his book to bolster the argument that the U.S. intelligence community’s reliance on the drone program is having a radicalizing effect on the local population.

And then there is the risk of confusion and disorganization within the U.S. defence community itself. Recent announcements about the Pentagon establishing its own Defense Clandestine Service (DCS) to collect intelligence from human sources (HUMINT) has created a situation whereby an increasingly militarized CIA is doing what the Pentagon should be doing as an increasingly “espionagized” Pentagon seeks to do what the CIA should be doing. In the spring of 2012, the CIA carried out more drone attacks in Yemen than in the previous nine years combined. The lines between the CIA and military —organizations that have never much liked each other to begin with — are being blurred.

Targeted killings do, however, have their place in the counter-terrorism toolbox. Like all specialty tools, should not be used to try and fix every problem. Its judicious use can have a devastating effect on a terrorist organization; Hezbollah has never fully recovered from the assassination of arch-terrorist, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in the heart of Damascus in 2008. Mughniyeh was not only a founder of Hezbollah, but the brains behind Hezbollah’s many terrorist attacks as well as its militarization into a formidable regional force. His death also had a strong (and continuing) demoralizing effect on the organization. This is also the case with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) whose highly effective leader Fathi Shaqaqi was assassinated in Malta in 1995. His replacement, Ramadan Shallah, a former adjunct professor at the University of South Florida, is seen to be an ineffectual leader who is subject to derision by his Iranian sponsors for being too weak and risk averse.

Targeted killings still constitute a small percentage of the operational activities of the national intelligence services that engage in them. But there is clear evidence that targeted killings are becoming more and more attractive as the results are immediate and career-enhancing. This is in stark contrast to unglamorous and traditional spycraft, where recruiting HUMINT sources can be slow and tedious, with any potential payoff years away. It would be a huge mistake to neglect the one for the relative expediency of the other.

Killing Hamas weapons procurers Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai and his successor, Ahmed al-Jabari, in Gaza, will deter that group’s ability to arm itself with rockets in the short term. But neither killing is an answer to the ongoing problem of weapons smuggling to Gaza. Likewise with the string of assassinations of scientists working on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The scientists die. The program continues. While it can be an effective tool, targeted killing, at best, only buys the time needed to address the broader geopolitical problems. It does not solve them.

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